


Not Just a Cold

by embroiderama



Category: White Collar
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 17:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2158521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal learns that children, like dogs, are dangerous when they haven’t had their shots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Just a Cold

**Author's Note:**

> This is shameless sick-fic for which I have no excuse. I should have been writing other things, but this one decided to get written today.

Neal rolled over in bed and swallowed, trying to stifle the urge to cough, but it was no good. He sat up and gave in to the dry cough that made his throat ache and his eyes burn. The mattress shift under him and then Peter’s hand was on his back, rubbing lightly.

“Sorry,” Neal gasped out between coughs.

“Hush,” El said. “Here, try to take a sip of water.”

Neal opened his eyes enough to see the bottle of water in front of him, and he took a few careful sips until the coughs died down. When he passed the bottle back to El, she handed him a tissue, and Neal dabbed at his watery eyes before blowing his nose.

“You okay?” Peter asked, sounding concerned but sleepy.

“It’s just a cold. I should go sleep in the guest room so we don’t all end up feeling like zombies.”

“We want you here.” El tugged on Neal until he got back under the covers.

The truth was that Neal didn’t want to go anywhere. He was finally off of the anklet, finally free, and all he wanted to do was stay with Peter and El. He wasn’t used to having anybody around to give him tissues and rub his back when he was sick, but there was something amazingly comforting about feeling cared for. “Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“No more cases with kids, okay? Never never.”

Peter laughed quietly. “Whatever you say.”

Neal blamed the cold that had been hanging around for the past week—and, though he didn’t want to admit it, getting worse—on the case he’d worked with Peter a couple of weeks earlier. Peter had brought Neal in as a consultant to go undercover in a sting to catch administrators taking bribes at a ritzy private pre-school, and while Neal thought his immune system was good he clearly wasn’t around small children enough to have immunity to their germs. In any case, he figured he would feel better if he got some more sleep so he closed his eyes, rubbed at the lingering soreness in his chest, and nestled in against Peter as he drifted off.

~~~

In the morning, Neal still didn’t feel well but he didn’t think he was nearly sick enough to stay home, not when there was work to be done. Sterling Bosch had taken a chance on hiring him, thanks largely to good references from Sara and Peter, and Neal didn’t want to let them down, especially when he was only a few months into his employment there. The slight redness around his eyes and nose didn’t look very professional, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. When he made his way downstairs after getting dressed, El frowned at him over her coffee.

“You should really call in sick.”

“No way.” Neal sneezed, and the sneeze set off a cough that hurt from his throat straight down to his stomach. When he got his breath back, El was standing in front of him looking at him pointedly. “My throat’s just irritated. I’m not coughing _up_ anything, not a big deal.”

“If you say so, sweetie.” El gave Neal a kiss on the cheek then frowned again. “You feel like you’ve got a fever.”

“I’m just warm from coughing. I’m fine.” Neal looked at his watch. “And I need to go. I love you.”

“Love you.”

On the way to work, Neal picked up a hot tea and a bagel with butter. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he thought he might feel better with some food in his stomach, and the tea seemed like a good idea for his throat. The first part of the morning went okay. Neal picked at his breakfast as he worked in his tiny office, and if he wasn’t being especially productive he was at least making the attempt. Mid-morning, Neal had to attend a department meeting, and somehow sitting at a table trying to act like he wasn’t miserable was much more difficult than staring at the computer in his office.

In the middle of giving his progress report, Neal felt a tickle in his chest. “Excuse me,” he said as he left the room so that he wouldn’t have to hack all over his co-workers. He stood in the hallway coughing into his elbow with one hand on his chest when the force of coughing made his stomach flip. Neal tried to swallow around the coughs as he hurried down the hall to the men’s room, but as soon as he made it to a stall he had to bend over and cough up his breakfast into the toilet. When the cough finally tapered off, Neal leaned against the side of the bathroom stall and just breathed until he felt like he could walk without curling up on the floor and going to sleep.

At the sink, he rinsed his mouth and splashed water on his face, but no amount of damp paper towels took away the flushed look of his skin. Neal straightened himself up as much as he could then headed back to the meeting. Everybody looked at him as he re-entered the room, and Neal smiled sheepishly. “Sorry about that.”

His department head, Lisa, waved off the apology. “Just go home. Please.”

Neal shook his head. “I—“

“You look like hell, and we don’t need your cold or plague or whatever it is going around the office. You can work from home if you want, but go home.”

Neal sighed. He hated to admit that he might have something worse than a cold, but the incident in the men’s room was difficult to ignore, and all he really wanted to do was rest. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Feel better.” Lisa nodded, and Neal knew he was dismissed. He picked up his papers and took them back to his office, then packed up and headed out.

Neal had been taking the subway to and from work most days, but he was too tired to deal with the hassle so he hailed a cab and called Peter once he’d given his destination to the driver.

“Hey, how are you feeling?”

“Not great. I’m going home.”

Peter was quiet for a moment. “Maybe you should go to the doctor? I can meet you at the urgent care clinic if you want.”

“No, I’m just going to get some rest. I don’t need to go to the doctor for the kiddie flu.”

“Hmm. I’ll try to come home early.”

“That’s really not necessary.” Neal felt another tickle in his chest, but he didn’t want to make Peter worry any more than he already was. “Talk to you later. Bye.” He ended the call then covered his mouth as he gave in to the cough. He felt the cab driver watching him in the rear view mirror, and when the cough finally ended Neal sat up straight and tried to look healthy. “Sorry about that.”

The cab driver muttered something in response, and Neal slumped back against the seat. He had almost drifted off to sleep when the cab pulled up in front of the house in Brooklyn, and he gave the guy a good tip before dragging himself out of the cab and up the stairs to the front door. Satchmo was surprised and excited to see him, but Neal just gave him a perfunctory pat on the head then pushed himself up the rest of the stairs to the second floor. He stripped down to his boxers and draped his clothes over a chair before climbing into bed, letting the cool sheets and the comfortable smells surround him as he gave into his exhaustion and fell asleep.

~~~

Neal woke to the feeling of somebody touching his face and jostling his shoulder. “Neal? Hey, can you wake up for a minute?”

Neal sniffled and opened his eyes to see Peter perched on the bed next to him. “Mmm, why?”

“I want to take your temperature, and you should drink some water. Maybe take some Tylenol.”

Neal sighed and sat up, but the sigh set off a cough, and all he cough do was curl forward and ride it out while Peter rubbed his back again. When he finally sat up, Peter didn’t say anything. He just held out the thermometer and held Neal’s gaze with a serious look in his eyes. Neal stuck the thermometer in his mouth and closed his eyes, breathing slowly through his stuffy nose until the thermometer beeped. Peter took it from his mouth, and Neal opened his eyes when Peter shook his shoulder again.

“Your fever’s not too high, 101°, but I’m worried about you.”

“It’s just a cough.”

“Your face was so red it was almost purple, and it’s obvious that you feel awful.”

“It’s probably bronchitis. I had it before, and they didn’t even give me antibiotics. It’ll go away.”

“If you’re not at least a little bit better by tomorrow, I want you to go get checked out. Will you do that?”

Neal appreciated that Peter was asking rather than ordering, and he had to admit that he was tired of being sick. “Okay. If I’m not feeling any better tomorrow, I’ll go.”

“Or before then if you get any worse.”

Neal just rolled his eyes and started to lay down again but Peter stopped him.

“Water and Tylenol, remember?”

Neal took the pills and water and let Peter help him get settled with some pillows propping him up. When he woke later, it was starting to get dark outside, and he could hear Peter and El talking downstairs. The Tylenol or the hours of rest or something was making him feel well enough to get up, use the bathroom, and head downstairs in his robe and slippers.

El greeted him with a hug and another kiss on the cheek. “You feel a little bit cooler.”

“I told you I’d be okay.”

“We were just about to sit down to dinner, and I brought you some soup. What do you think?”

Neal hadn’t been thinking about food, but now that El mentioned it he realized that he was hungry. Breakfast had been a long time ago, and he’d lost some of it to a coughing fit, not that he was going to admit that to either of his lovers. “I think that sounds good. Thank you.”

The soup was good, and Neal was glad to be out of bed and sitting at the table. He listened to El talk about her day while he worked on eating his soup, and he was just about to declare himself officially on the mend when he felt the precursor to a coughing fit start up in his chest. Neal put his soup spoon down with a clatter, and he saw both Peter and El look his way before the cough came and he had to close his eyes against the force of it.

The coughing fit felt like it was tearing through his whole body—his chest and his throat and his head and his back. And his stomach. The hacking coughs wouldn’t stop as Neal stood and raced into the kitchen where he coughed up soup into the sink then kept coughing until lights began to sparkle behind his eyelids. He felt hands on his arms, pulling on him then pushing him down, and when he felt his butt hit the floor he opened his teary eyes to see Peter and El crouched in front of him.

Neal managed to catch his breath then, and the cough left him with a headache and a sore chest and stomach. Peter and El both looked alarmed, and Neal didn’t know what to say. He let his head drop back against the cabinet behind him and focused on breathing.

“Okay,” Peter said, his voice calm and slow and serious. “That’s enough. Your lips were turning blue. I’m taking you to the ER.”

“I agreed to go tomorrow.” Neal’s voice sounded shredded, and he winced at the rawness of his throat.

“Sweetie, even if it’s just bronchitis you’re hurting yourself coughing that much.” El touched his face with her soft, cool hand. “You burst a blood vessel in your eye. You need to go get checked out.”

Neal nodded, feeling too exhausted and too sick to argue. Peter disappeared then returned with some clothes and shoes and he hauled Neal up from the floor then held him steady as he pulled on the jeans and sweater and stepped into his shoes. The drive to the hospital went quickly, and Neal had resigned himself to spending the evening sitting in a hard waiting room chair when another coughing fit and some shouting from Peter resulted in him being taken back to an exam room in a wheelchair.

Neal was poked and prodded, his blood drawn, a sample taken from his throat, and then he was taken down the hall where he had to stand up for a chest x-ray. The diagnosis, given to him by a tired-looking doctor, was enough of a surprise that Neal just blinked his eyes and looked at the guy.

“Whooping cough? What—how could he get that?” Peter was just a little bit too loud, and Neal really just wanted to go home and sleep some more.

The doctor didn’t seem bothered by Peter’s volume. “Have you been around any children recently?”

“Two or three weeks ago, we spent most of the day at a pre-school, but I don’t remember any of the children being sick.”

“Which school?”

“Manhattan Collegiate.”

“Ah. Well, we’ve had a small outbreak of pertussis centered on a few schools, including that one. At this point, more than half of the parents in those schools are refusing to vaccinate, and this is the result. Many adults no longer have effective immunity left over from childhood.”

“Damn it. Is this dangerous?”

“No, not in otherwise healthy adults, but it’s certainly not pleasant. Mr. Caffrey?”

Neal opened his eyes to acknowledge the doctor.

“I’m going to send you home with a prescription for antibiotics, and you need to make sure to take them as directed. You should stay hydrated and rest at home until your cough gets better. You should check in with your regular doctor in about a week or sooner if you’re not improving within a couple of days.”

“Can’t you give him something for the cough?”

“Unfortunately, cough medicine doesn’t work well on the pertussis symptoms. I’ll give you some discharge instructions, but he mostly needs to rest until the antibiotics can do their job. Mr. Caffrey?”

Neal opened his eyes again. Couldn’t the doctor just talk to Peter? “Yeah?”

“When you cough, you should hold onto a pillow to your chest. You have some ribs that are bruised, and you want to protect them. Okay?”

Neal nodded. “Great.” Talking started up the cough again, and the doctor tok the opportunity to show Neal what to do. The pillow helped, making it feel somewhat less like he was being beaten from the inside, and Neal had started to drift off again when Peter took his hand.

“We can get out of here. Will you let me help you get dressed again?”

Neal nodded and sat up to sit on the side of the bed. He slipped out of the hospital gown then put his arms into the sweater when Peter pulled it over his head. He stepped into his jeans then let Peter hold onto him as he stood and zipped himself up. Peter put his arms around Neal’s back, and Neal let himself lean into Peter’s chest, his head on Peter’s shoulder.

“El’s on her way back to pick us up, and after we get you home I’ll go get your prescription.” Peter rubbed his hand up and down over Neal’s back, and Neal thought he might be able to fall asleep right there, standing up and all. “And you’re going to stay home,” Peter continued more quietly, “and let us take care of you until you’re feeling better. Right? Neal?”

Neal nodded against Peter’s shoulder. “Mmmm-hmmm. And no more kids.”

“Not unless they’ve had their shots.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I promise,” Peter said, and that was good enough for Neal.

~~~

Neal didn’t know what time it was when they got home, but it felt like the middle of the night. While Peter went to the pharmacy, El saw Neal inside and shadowed him up the stairs. He felt too dirty from fever sweat and hospital funk to want to get in bed, so El joined him for a lukewarm shower. She looked so beautiful, with her hair wet and loose around her shoulders, and Neal wished he had the energy to do more than hold her close and feel her skin against his as they stood under the flowing water.

Neal fell asleep as soon as he was semi-horizontal on the bed then woke when Peter came home and plied him with juice and antibiotic pills that hurt his throat and more Tylenol.

“Good job,” Peter said, and Neal closed his eyes and leaned back against El. Peter joined them a few minutes later, and Neal felt perfectly supported, perfectly comforted between their bodies. If he woke up coughing, he knew he wouldn’t be alone, and right in that moment there wasn’t anything else that he needed to know.


End file.
